A state like any other

Israel is a real geopolitical oddball. Not all of its Jews are from Europe and such; in fact I just visited relatives who've lived in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas since 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and King Ferdinand expelled the Jew. But its politics sometimes resembles the European states that many of its citizens left around 1945. For years now Israel's politics have been dominated by its dealings with the Palestinians. For many, this means security: building a wall to keep out suicide bombers, smashing Gaza to weaken Hamas, bombing Lebanon to destroy Hizbullah, etc.

But when the state was founded, the Israelis had more in mind than security. My father likes to say it was a state founded by socialists, people who believed that all men are created equal and should live according to his ability. Between the state and the kibbutz, romantically speaking, capitalism wasn't all that important. Laid low by the second intifada, Israel decided to liberalize its economy during the 2003-5 finance ministry of Binyamin Netanyahu (please excuse the wikipedia link; the footnotes should help). At worst, the reforms were derided by those in Labor (and even Netanyahu's Likud) as "Thatcherite." Some are more critical of him than others, of course. Haaretz attacks his "anti-Churchillian" policies that destroyed the egalitarian framework that kept the country together. The article blasts him for his Reagan-Thatcherism: "For instead of creating an economic and social powerhouse capable of meeting the challenges that surround it, he created a robber state that serves the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox and the tycoons." But his so-called "obeisance" to the market played a role in helping boost Israel's economy to its current heights. Israel is doing better now than it has in some time.

So why did 250,000 march for social justice as Israel enjoys 5.7% unemployment and 4.8% growth during an anemic worldwide recovery? The marchers blame wage disparities (the highest among the OECD countries) and (illiberal) wage disparities for their plight. Overall, these people feel that there is an economic miracle going on and they are not a part of it. The Netanyahu ministry is trying to respond- it "vowed to free up more state-owned land for development, build more low-rent housing and improve public transport. It also wants to lower dairy prices with more imports and boost medical staff numbers to address demands by striking doctors." But more and more parties are joining in. Kadima in particular is supporting it (and claiming that Netanyahu is igoring their demands), and parties as disparate in politics as the Arab-Israeli UAL-Ta'al and the rightwing National Union have thrown their support behind the protests.

Why now? For one, Israel seems to be "between wars" and unable to do much on the security front. Little can be done on the Palestinian question at the moment. The Oslo Peace Process has come to a stop; some respectable journalists claim that "The Oslo Process is over." Netanyahu is trying to fight the UN's recognition of the Palestinian state, but that's a lost cause as long as Oslo is frozen. Such a fight is determined at the level of the United Nations General Assembly, where no country can veto its decisions. That's how the UN got involved in the Suez crisis- neither Britain nor France could veto the General Assembly decision. Furthermore, the People's Republic of China got the "China" seat in the same way in 1971. Unless Israel can convince a majority of the 193 members of the UN that it should not recognize Palestine, then Palestine will be seen as a sovereign country with its own representative. Perhaps they feel that America's ability to veto its move to the General Assembly will be enough. Although I wonder, then, why France and the UK did not prevent the Suez issue from going to the General Assembly...

Regardless of the maneuvering on the Palestinian question, it is interesting to see that Israel's population wants to focus on economics instead. Israel is not an Arab autocracy that is trying to maintain its gerontocracy; its closer to Spain's economic protests, even if the Arab Spring had its own economic elements (the Tunisian revolt, and through it the whole movement, began when one Tunisian burned himself over his economic situation). It is just a normal country with normal problems, and that is what the economic protests remind us about.

Yisrael is insane

Hello from fake-America!

Well, if North Virginia isn't "real" Virginia, than you can't get more "real" than Taxachusetts, which elected the first black senator since Reconstruction and had Republican governors between 1988 or so to 2006...And at least one of them was a centrist hated by Jesse Helms and the other one is the Antichrist aka Mitt Mormon Romney.

Anyway, I forgot about this. Sorry! There went the systems, eh? Well, how about two opposite ones?

Canada is basically Britain, where the upper house is filled with a hodgepodge of party toadies- that is, installed by the parties in power over the years without any formalities such as elections (since Canada has mostly been run by Liberals over the years, this means that Liberals control the Senate). In Britain the MPs and the population realized how stupid a House of Lords was back in the 1900s, when it was stripped of most of its powers. Nowadays it has lost more and more of its, ahem, charm (You can't inherit seats anymore, for instance, and it will be elcted- thus dragging Britain into the 19th century or so). Hopefully Canada will join every other country in the Western hemisphere at some point, but the fact that it's mostly unchanged since its founding in 1867 is a tad unnerving.

Never mind the fact that the "first past the poll" system has heavily favored the Quebec separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois, thus preventing any stable majority governements for years now. Perversely, the Reform party- then a Western conservative grouping- had ensured the Liberals majority governments from 1993-2004, but their merger seems to have made the Conservatives stronger. But all this has done is guarantee minority governments; 2004-8 has seen 3 unconclusive elections in four years. That's insane. Then again, this is pretty much our system, except the Speaker of the House is pretty much the dictator thanks to extreme party loyalty and the President is the Governor General and doesn't seem to do much.

Think: What if Cheney was speaker of the House and the Senate didn't exist? Anyone convinced of Cheney's power should understand now.

Israel? That makes Canada look excessively stable.

Israel has had a Proportional Representation system since its founding, and it mostly demonstrates the problems of PR. You see, it works on the idea that if a party gets at least 2% of the vote, it should be in government. In this way it's extremely fair and a two party system doesn't exist, but it also means that a lot of parties only get a few seats in the Knesset (out of 120 total), and a few parties still get out on top. In the last election, five parties got more than 10 seats; Kadima got the most at twenty nine seats, less than a fourth of all the seats available. This means that the parties have to horse trade a lot to get everyone on board. The new election in Israel is going on right now because the new leader of Kadima refused to increase handouts and keep Jerusalem undivided, which is what the shas party wants.

This also means that the Grand Coalitions of Germany are far more prevalent in Israel, since it's difficult only to reign with a big party and a few (er, maybe more than a few) religious groups with 2 or 3 seats each. How bad is this? Here's the government

Kadima (Centrist grouping founded to give Ariel Sharon a way to run without depending on anti-Palestinian land deal Likud)
Labour (once dominant and hoping to get the next election; still somewhat socialist)
Shas (a Sephardic religious grouping; supportive of synagogues and such, obviously.)
Yisraeli Beitenu ("Israel is our Home," it's a right wing secular grouping and once solely the voice of Russian Jewish immigrants. It's really rightwing and is similar to Likud on some issues. Given it's suspicion of religion, it's sort of ironic that it's in the same coalition as Shas)
Pensioners (a protest party for pensions, obviously)

Yeah, so there are ex-and not so ex-socialists, Ex-soviet Jewish right wingers, renegades who joined together in support of Ariel Sharon, Sephardic Rabbies, and for some weird reason pensioners. I might have missed a party or two too.

Is this, and can it be, stable? Heavens know Italy realized this was stupid a long time ago, having the FPP system from 1993-2006 and since 1993 reformed itself into a two coalition system. And, given American politics, this would be a stupid idea; if Israel- a country of 7 million people- has at least 10 parties with seats, then one can only imagine what would happen in a country with fifty states and 300 million people.

Let's just leave those two countries out of any electoral debate, okay?